[B-Greek] MWYSHS

Vasile Stancu stancu.c.vasile at gmail.com
Tue Apr 5 11:17:18 EDT 2011


If the 'promotion' of the Greek form of the name MWUSHS had occured 
through the pen of a Jew, would the analysis be the same as if the same 
had occured through the ear of a Greek?

Vasile Stancu


On 4/5/2011 3:11 PM, Randall Buth wrote:
>> For some reason the Greeks heard a diphthong instead of a simple O
>> or W.  At this point in time it is probably not possible to determine
>> whether the Greeks heard correctly or not.  As WU is not a common
>> combination in Greek, we can probably assume it was used for a
>> reason.
> Yes, there was a reason
> but the answer is not in the vowels that they heard
> but in the consonants.
>
> Greek does not have a "sh" sound, only 's'.
> Now "sh" bunches up the tongue and has more rounded lips than 's'.
> The 'upsilon' also had tightly rounded lips, at least if someone is
> using the correct sound for Koine Y. (It is like German 'ue' and
> French 'u', a high, front, ROUNDED vowel).
> By adding the ypsilon the Greeks were able to more closely approximate
> the sound of 'sh' in Moshe [moyse (pronounced with rounded front vowel)]
>
> Note SYMEON, too. Where the YPSILON follows the sigma to fill it out
> in Greek ears. Hebrew did not have an Y vowel. Also, the E stands in
> for the pharyngeal fricative `ayin, that does not occur in Greek either.
> [shim-`on]
>
> ERRWSO
> Randall
>
>
>



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